"Self-Appointed Experts"

The man who will neither obey wisdom in others nor adventure
for her himself is fatal. A society where the simple many obey the few seers can
live: a society where all were seers could live even more fully. But a society
where the mass is still simple and the seers are no longer attended to can
achieve only superficiality, baseness, ugliness, and in the end, extinction. On
or back we must go; to stay here is death. C.S. Lewis, Miracles, Ch.
6

The Script

I'm sick and tired of self-appointed so-called experts and their know-it-all,
arrogant attitude. Why don't you people stay out of things you know nothing
about? To hear you tell it, you know everything and the rest of us are stupid.

I've seen this script before. At this point I'm supposed to get all humble
and apologetic and say "There, there. We didn't mean to make you feel bad.
You're really a good person and a valuable human being and your opinions do count."

I'm tired of playing that game.

We're not "self-appointed" or "so-called" experts. We
are real experts. We're not "authority figures." We are
real authorities.

It's not arrogance to say what you know professionally. It is arrogance
to reject expert opinion without having expertise of your own.

If hearing the experts say you're wrong makes you feel bad or stupid, that
is your problem, not ours. See a therapist and work on your self-esteem. If
you think this is rough on the ego, try getting a paper or grant proposal
you've worked on for months rejected, something real experts face all the
time.

We don't know everything, but we do know more on our subjects of
expertise than other people, especially people with no training at all.

Unless you have real evidence to back up your opinions, they don't
count.

If you hear something that conflicts with what you think you know, and you
don't bother to check it out, you shouldn't feel stupid. You are
stupid.

If you want to take on the experts but won't spend the time, effort and
money to become an expert yourself, you're not just stupid. You're lazy,
too.

If you think I'm disrespecting you, you're right. I have no respect for
people who are uninformed, get angry when someone contradicts them, but are
too lazy to get informed, and too cowardly to face failure, criticism, and
the possibility they might have to change their minds. You're not a
good person. Nobody who is lazy and cowardly can be called "good."

Where did you get the idea you're so valuable? There are six billion of
us. You're not all that unique. How exactly did you get the notion that you
stand so high in the cosmic scheme of things that you have the right to make
real experts treat you as an equal without bothering to acquire any
knowledge yourself?

So ordinary people aren't as good as Ph.D.'s? People with ordinary jobs make
the steel, mine the coal, harvest the wheat, drive the trucks, lay the pipes,
string the wires, put out the fires, enforce the laws, keep the records, and do
a hundred thousand other things absolutely essential to keeping the world
running. They deserve to be honored and respected.

But that doesn't qualify them to have opinions on subjects where they have
no expertise.

Doctor, Doctor

A common complaint is that people with Ph.D.'s call themselves
"doctor," but they aren't real doctors.

If you buy this, you just demonstrated your total lack of qualification to
deal with experts in anything. The word "doctor" comes from the Latin
verb docere, meaning to teach. Doctor in Latin means
"teacher," and was applied in the Middle Ages to anyone who had
mastered a subject well enough to teach it at a University. It wasn't until
rather late that medicine was even added to the University curriculum at all. As
for surgeons, they were regarded as tradesmen and manual workers until nearly
1800.

So "real doctors" take their title from university professors, not
the other way round.

And I don't care about "common usage." Common usage is just plain wrong and
the fact that too many people are too illiterate to know any better doesn't make
it right. You do not get to redefine words just because you're too lazy to use
them correctly.

How to Become an Expert

Most people become experts by meeting the standards of other experts. I'm not
a "self-appointed" expert. Columbia University said I was an expert
when they granted me a doctorate. The State of Wisconsin said I was an expert
when they hired me in their University System, gave me tenure, made me a full
professor, and made me a Registered Geologist. Other professionals say I'm an
expert when they accept my research for publication.

Most experts don't stay in their original areas. They move into new fields.
You get to be an expert in a new field by learning enough about it to be able to
teach it and publish credible research in it. Experts don't just learn a
subject, they learn how to become an expert. They learn how to find references,
and understand them thoroughly enough to be able to duplicate that level of
expertise in their own work.

Every recognized field of learning was started by someone who had no formal
training but figured it out on the fly. You can become an expert without formal
training. You can learn a foreign language without attending a class or even
cracking a book. And you're fluent when other speakers treat you as an equal,
not when you think you are. Attacking native speakers of a language
because they won't regard you as fluent after a few weeks of practice would be
ridiculous, but people do it all the time in other fields.

There are amateurs in many fields who acquire expertise informally; inventors
who never went to tech school, amateur astronomers, ornithologists, botanists
and mineralogists who never took a class, amateur historians who are the
recognized experts on their particular interests, and so on. And they did it the
hard way - the only way - by spending years immersed in the field until they
reached the level where other experts acknowledged them as equals.

2,200 years ago, Archimedes told his king there was no Royal Road to
geometry, that he would have to struggle with it like everyone else. This is a king,
for heaven's sake. Where does someone with no training come off thinking he can
read "I Am Joe's Hangnail" in the Reader's Digest and be
qualified to attack the medical profession?

Staying Expert

Once you get to be an expert, you have to remain one. If you make it to the
NFL or the NBA and don't work out, your career will be short. If you think
working on your Mustang in high school qualifies you to fix cars today, you are
in for a rude shock. One reason university professors have to publish research
is to ensure they stay expert in their fields. I spend most of my day on
activities that didn't even exist when I was a graduate student.

Once professors get tenure, it pretty much takes a thermonuclear weapon to
remove them. That protection is there because a significant part of our job is
to tick people off. We tell them things they don't want to hear, like the earth
is 4.6 billion years old, there is a finite amount of oil in the ground, you
can't provide government services without taxes, we really did go to the moon,
or they didn't learn enough to pass the course. So when a university grants
tenure, it basically makes a lifetime commitment. Universities want to be sure
that they're tenuring people with a lifetime commitment to staying on top of
their fields. The stereotype of the professor who gets tenure and goes to seed
has a basis in truth; universities try to avoid hiring people like that. Unlike
most jobs where there's a 90-day or six-month probationary period, university
professors have to demonstrate sustained productivity for six years.

A few years ago I published a textbook with two other authors. The chapter
reviewers came from institutions ranging from prominent research universities
all the way to community colleges. As much as I despise the "publish or perish"
system, the comments I got from people who never published research were
horrifying. They either had not read a journal in years, or if they did read
recent research, misunderstood it. Expertise in any field is truly a matter of
"use it or lose it." Some of these people had lost the right to be considered
experts.

So people who are recognized experts in their fields don't just have a piece
of paper on the wall; they spend a great deal of their time maintaining and
upgrading their skills. While you're preparing to take on the medical profession
by reading "I Am Joe's Hangnail" in the Reader's Digest, what do you
suppose the medical professionals are reading?

The dead giveaway that a person doesn't have a clue what really goes on in
professional circles is the question "how many books have you read on ......?"
Books are just not the principal way information flows among professionals.
Almost all professional fields report new information in journals. If you're in
show biz, you don't find out about new plays and movie projects from books; you
read Variety. If you're a doctor, you don't find out about new ways to
remove gall bladders from books; you read the New England Journal of Medicine.
And in any case, it's not quantity but quality. One paper in the Geological
Society of America Bulletin with a reliable age date for a rock unit
outweighs ten thousand books by creationists arguing for a young earth.

Time

"But I don't have time to check out all those facts." Fine, then you don't
have time to have an opinion. Amazingly, people who don't have time to check out
real science seem to have time to read all kinds of junk science. They don't
have time to read real earth science and biology but they can read creationist
books or go to creationist presentations. They don't have time to learn real
history but have time to read crackpot works on "ancient mysteries."

But you work hard all day and are too tired to read when you get home. You
must have me confused with someone who cares. If you want to have an opinion on
something, find the time to get informed.

Also, in our society, we have a built-in mechanism to create informed people.
It's called "school." If you opted not to make full use of it while you were
there, or let the information slip away afterward, that is not my problem.
Science is not responsible for your irresponsible lifestyle choice.

"Arrogance"

This is a recent e-mail from a colleague.

Okay-

So, I'm waiting for my new dentist to give me a checkup (my
old dentist left the practice) and I'm reading a book on the geology of
southern Utah. The new guy ("Dr. Mike") asks what I'm reading and I
show him. I tell him I'm a geologist. He says "You must really like the
Grand Canyon." I indicate that it is one of my favorite places on earth
and I visited it five times last year, once backpacking down to the bottom
with my children. He says, "I just don't know how they can understand how
old it is. After all, Jesus only lived 2000 years ago." This began an
interesting one-sided conversation (I'm at a disadvantage when people are
sticking sharp, pointy things in my mouth) about young-earth creationism. Wow.
Even at the dentist. I offered to take him out to a site on the east side of
Las Vegas Valley to show him some rocks, but he declined indicating that
everyone has their unprovable theories.

Wow. Even at the dentist. I wonder how he would feel if I
tried to tell him how to do dentistry?

This example is striking because it's someone who has years of training
himself and ought to realize that people in other fields undergo similar
training. But the last sentence says it all. What would you say if someone
walked into your place of employment, admitted he had no technical training in
your work, but told you that you were doing it all wrong (probably while
demonstrating amply his lack of expertise)? Wouldn't you describe such a person
as arrogant? Who is really the self-appointed expert here, the person with a lot
of training or the person with none who still thinks he is qualified to
criticize?

Where In The World Do People Learn To Write Like This?

This is an actual e-mail I received:

You astound me, Steve Dutch. The reasons for this are varied, and
while I do not plan to explore them in full detail, I shall outline
them briefly for the benefit of your utterly massive ego. It started
with an accidental visit to your site, this mundane scatter of HTML
encased with long, long paragraphs. The opinions stated in an
irrefutable manner, the disclaimers proudly displayed in the heading of
each page, and that peculiar manner in which you choose to write, a
manner which often leaves readers unaware of your true feelings. Yet
these reasons are what compelled me to sacrifice an entire evening
analyzing every detail of your personal monument (for would merit would
my words have if they were based on a single article?). I'm given the
distinct impression that you represent a mythical hybrid, some odd
amalgamation of Basil Fawlty and Santa Claus. However, these perceived follies
present the justification for my presence; to actually
discover, on the Internet, logical ideas presented in a manner devoid
of superfluous graphics and fanfare is commendable. I sincerely hope
your students recognize your seemingly endless source of wisdom, as
well as your analytical abilities. Also, after reading your praise for
the film "Enemy at the Gates," I'm interested in your opinion
concerning "A Bridge Too Far."

A forewarning: disregarding the film, or curtailing its perceived
historical inaccuracies will result in a lengthy, Ignatius Reilly-esque
tirade in which I prove you wrong. Commending it, though, will justify
further praise upon your spacious mind.

Does anybody have a clue what this guy is saying? The words and syntax bear a
superficial resemblance to English, but there's no content that I can discern. I
gather that he resents some of my pages, but he doesn't say precisely what his
problem is, so there's not much to respond to. And no, my name is not a
pseudonym and I am a single person, not a committee.

As for not revealing my true feelings, that's deliberate. When I discuss
certain topics, I do so as impersonally as possible, precisely because writers
like this one want to "know where I'm coming from" so they can know
whether or not they can feel free to disregard what I'm saying. When I leave my
feelings out of it, they have to deal with the logical and factual content,
something that is apparently painful or confusing to a lot of people.

People who write stuff like this tend to live in their own weird worlds, but
on the off chance that you do think this is how to write, or know somebody who
does, let me assure you it isn't so. Editorial pages are chock-full of stuff
like this, where the writers indulge in convoluted wording and oblique
allusions. I guess they think it makes them sound erudite or profound. Actually,
all it does is make them sound like they can't say what they mean in plain
English.

Technical works are full of complex prose because the subject matter is
complex and calls for it. Legal prose is complex because it has to define terms
as precisely as possible without leaving any possible ambiguity. Shakespeare and
the King James Bible have complex prose because that's how people talked 400
years ago, and people of the time considered it perfectly plain English. Stuff
like the e-mail above is complex because the writer apparently wants to impress
people. If you're an English teacher who has let stuff like this pass, shame on
you.

Ditch the pretentious language. People who write like this come across as
posers. It's like some CPA who lets his stubble grow for a month so he can ride
his moped to the Sturgis bike rally and "blend in."

How To Let Scientists Know You're Not One

This is verbatim from a recent e-mail:

I currently have a 60 page report in review with a peer-reviewed journal.
I'd love to explain the mechanism here to you but that may be unwise before
the paper is published.

Let's take this phrase by phrase...

I currently have a 60 page report

Length doesn't correlate with quality. It will be very hard to get any
60-page paper published. Who cares how long the manuscript is?
College freshmen talk as if length correlates with hard work; most
scientists struggle to shorten their papers.

in review with a peer-reviewed journal.

Being in review doesn't mean a thing. Acceptance is the hard
part.

I'd love to explain the mechanism here to you but that may be unwise
before the paper is published.

Nobel-Prize caliber research is circulated informally to peers as
preprints, so why exactly people outside the mainstream are so paranoid
their ideas will be stolen is a mystery. I have a suspicion that "before the
paper is published" will be a while.

"But You Have To Respect Their Dedication"

Why? Google 9/11, and the wingnut and moonbat sites far outnumber legitimate
sites. Velikovsky could waste his talents on an imaginary scenario of ancient
catastrophes instead of real research on mental health. American society could
terminate the Apollo Program to spend the savings on "problems here on earth"
and get nothing in return for it, and many of the people who cheered are
now saying it was all a hoax. Give me one good reason why I should respect such
a waste of intellectual resources.

The armed forces are critically short of linguists, and overseas competition
is cutting into jobs here, but Americans still seem to regard it as a personal
violation to have to learn foreign languages. Yet the same people can spend
hours writing illiterate blogs about politics and the war on terror that reveal a total lack of knowledge - of
anything. People have the time to read dozens of
creationist books but not a single legitimate book on geology or biology. What's
to respect here?

And Now A Word To Conspiracy Theorists

You are entitled to respect when you show respect to others. When you tell me
the government is engaged in all sorts of black ops, the corporations that
provide you with goods and services are all out to screw you, and anyone who
doubts is a co-conspirator or a dupe, what in the world can you offer me as a
reason to show you respect? You're dissing everyone in the world and you demand
respect for yourself?

And seriously, what reason do you have to complain about the world? Gas is $3
a gallon? You did nothing to find the oil, nothing to refine it, nothing to
transport it, nothing to invent any of the technology for exploiting it. The oil
is not your property. Is there some part of "private property" you don't
follow here? What exactly is your grounds for complaint? Medical care too
expensive? 200 years ago there were no CAT Scans, X-rays, MRI's, organ
transplants, antibiotics, antiseptics, or anesthesia. And what did you do
to bring any of that to pass? And if you complain about paying taxes for schools
to train the people who will eventually go into the medical profession, double
shame on you.

What's the difference between a conspiracy theorist and a new puppy? The
puppy eventually grows up and quits whining.